I’ve been meaning to read this book for a long time, and the impending release of Ron Howard’s adaptation spurred me to finally pick it up. It’s one of the better reading choices I’ve made this year. For the uninitiated, the Essex was a whaling ship that was sunk in 1820 roughly halfway between Hawaii and the coast of Peru; almost as far from land as you can be and still consider yourself terrestrial. The ship was attacked by a sperm whale, which ultimately inspired […]
Someone quiet Franklin, I want to hear more about Eleanor.
I’ll get this out of the way at the outset: I didn’t like this book. Why give it four stars, then, you ask? Well, it’s not a bad book. There’s nothing wrong with it, per say. I just didn’t like it. It took me eight months to read it. I’d like to blame it on the fact that my family increased by one 7 pound boy during that time, but there’s no getting around the fact that I simply struggled to get through this. I […]
This Cold War needs a little ray gun to warm things up.
My father bought into the myth of Ronald Reagan like a dying man holding onto the promise of an after life. He spent his life in the military, and would talk about not having actual rounds to fire under Jimmy Carter because of budget cuts. But Ronald Reagan? He gave us our soul back. This country was reborn after Vietnam, and Watergate, and the Iran hostage crises. Ronald Reagan cut taxes, and ended the Cold War, and reigned in an out of control government. He […]
If Suppiluliuma were here, I wonder what he’d make of the Arab Spring.
In many ways, “the world” of 3200 years ago was vastly different from today. The Torah (or “Hebrew Bible”, if you’re so inclined) wouldn’t be written for another 600 years. If Homer existed, he wouldn’t be born for another 300 years (give or take). Elsewhere in the world, the ancient Puebloans of the American Southwest first formed. The 12th century BCE is as far removed from the formation of the Roman Empire as we are from the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. In short, […]